Greatheart's Table

I have to confess that in many practical matters, I’m a slow learner. There are habits of wisdom and care to which I might be introduced on Tuesday which I’ve forgotten by Thursday. Changing behavior for me is a slow and sometimes traumatic process. Perhaps you’re different. I hope so. As we continue to address pastoral perseverance, I know that some of what I am suggesting may require significant...

There is a community building up around what we do here, and I’m grateful for all of you who are a part of that. If you’d like to support Greatheart’s Table, I have three things to say: First, it’s needed – there are recurring expenses involved in putting this together! Second, it’s easy – there is a link below. And third, I’m grateful – as your support helps make this resource a...

Some of you may be new listeners, and I welcome you! Landing as you are, though, in what we could call the middle of an ongoing conversation, you may find some help in getting oriented by heading back in the archives and listening to episode one. The topic on the table currently is “burnout,” and in this episode we look at this as something that is not unique to ministry, and as something that can...

The subject under consideration is one that will occupy us for a while, one that is always haunting us around the edges, what is known popularly as burnout but which could also be called losing heart. Thanks for joining us around Greatheart’s Table . You can help support this podcast by dropping a few coins in our tip jar. Thanks! EPISODE NOTES Notes and resources relevant to this episode: The def...

We all pastor, but our attachment to the work is not the same for all of us. Some of us love it, others of us do it, we all come to it with differing motives. Why is that? There are many tools out there designed to answer that question that are based upon genuine research and study. My thoughts on the subject are simply observations that are helpful to me. Scripture occasionally uses the metaphor...

Welcome to Greatheart’s Table, a podcast for pastors and those who love them. I’ve been challenged recently to think about those for whom I write the podcast. Though my target is rather specific – primarily those in full-time church based pastoral ministry, I get a lot of positive response from those who are not in that demographic. As I have pondered why that might be, I realized that there...

One of the things people gathered around a table can do for each other is to listen to them and when able to help them reorient their lives toward proper expectations. If our kids are unruly, for example, we can talk about it with others who might remind us that they are kids and that by definition there will be an element of unruliness in the mix. Such is also the case for churches and pastors. W...

When I have had the opportunity to meet some of you, I’m been impressed with the fact that we are all so different. We are different as pastors, as people, as churches, but our hunger is the same: to do and to be what and who God desires of us. I hope these posts help you all to do that. In this post I return to the world of children’s books, adapting a Dr. Seussian idea and refrain that would ser...

Pastoral ministry can pose many riddles for the pastor. But in this episode, I’d like to pose one ABOUT the pastor. If you are able to help support Greatheart’ s Table , you can use the link below. Of course, there is no obligation to do so. Also, do review this podcast and if you could pass it on to others, I’d be grateful. Thanks for joining us! You can help support this podcas...

Rick Blaine, Humphrey Bogart’s tough skinned character from the movie Casablanca is both idealistic and deeply cynical. Rick lets no one close and expects life to end poorly, and yet he relinquishes what is most precious to him for the sake of others. He’s hard not to admire. It was life that led Rick into his cynicism, and life can do the same to pastors. Recent events in and around the church ca...

I’ve been called an idealist since I was a teenager, and the truth is, I’ve not outgrown it. My thinking these days is that we should not need to. In some ways it is the shelving of our pastoral ideals that has caused malaise for many of us. In this post I want to consider how this has happened, and what micro-steps might be helpful in taking those ideals back off the shelf. You can help support t...

Welcome to Greatheart’s Table, a podcast for pastors and those who care for them. I hope you won’t mind a bit of shameless promotion. First, if you like this podcast, please subscribe. Better yet, subscribe to the podcast and then go to GreatheartsTable.com and subscribe to the newsletter as well. The content is the same, but this helps me get a better handle on who my listeners are. As well, if t...

Hi! Welcome to Greatheart’s Table! I may be technically the ‘host’ of this podcast, I’m as much a participant as a producer. What you might hear me say is more likely than not to be what I myself need to hear. There really is a parity around this table. As pastors we need each other, and we need to be honest with each other, for none of us has it all together; none of us has it all figured out. Ex...

I’ve often wondered what the devotional lives of my spiritual mentors were really like. I realize they never would really talk about it. Perhaps they were reticent to parade their acts of piety before others, and I get that. But the result is that I am left to imagine what the prayer lives of godly men and women really look like. Maybe they match what I read in the books, or maybe, they struggle l...

Since this post is being released on July 4, I have the Beatles floating around in my head: “You say you want a revolution – we all want to change the world.” I want to give some thought to that. We do want to change the world. But if we are honest, we realize how naïve that can be. A vision for the church that is local, organic, and vibrant is a beautiful and needed one. But to think such a...

This name “Greatheart’s Table” and the associated logo captures something important about ministry. The pulpit is important, but so is the table. I believe in preaching, but I also think we underestimate the ministry possibilities available to us through unstructured conversations over an ice cream sundae or a caramel machiato. I am encouraged, by the way, by how many of you who...

Welcome to Greatheart’s Table. I’m honored you would join me here. I remember reading about British pastor David Martyn Lloyd-Jones reading something like the complete works of John Owen while he was “on holiday” as they say. I certainly don’t spend my vacation time doing that. Or haven’t. Maybe I should. I don’t know. Am I wasting valuable time wandering around the Great Smoky Mountains looking f...

Recent days have been hard and have driven much conversation and introspection. Many are asking, as I do in this post, what is wrong, particularly what is wrong with the church. In my experience such considerations fail to take seriously Paul’s caution in 1 Corinthians 13. We can be a church with all our theological and political ducks in a row and still be odious to our king. Without love we are...

I mentioned in an earlier episode that I’m no great theologian. In fact, even though my only published book is a book of theology, I would reserve the title ‘theologian’ for others with greater credentials and stature. However, in this post I’d like to posit an attribute of God that no one ever talks about. That should give me pause, and it does, but I blunder ahead anyway. Because it has been hel...

A man once told me that the parish to which he was being called was a good place for someone who wanted to be lazy. I have a hard time processing that. I suppose I don’t know enough lazy pastors. Most of those I know work very hard and besides the damage to their bodies that this does, their souls grow thin. Now and then, perhaps, it might good for pastors to let their lives lie fallow. And as alw...

Hi! Welcome to May around Greatheart’s Table. I suppose the question I want to raise in this episode and the next is something like this: “If Christ is risen, why do I feel so dead?” Perhaps you have not framed it quite that way, but if you are like most pastors I know, you’ve felt it. You love what you do, you find life giving moments, but when, you wonder, might you come up for some air. As alwa...

Welcome to Greatheart’s Table , a podcast for pastors and those who love them. As you know I have a particular affinity for the smaller church, not because a small church is necessarily better, but because it and its pastors are often unnecessarily maligned. That said, we should all take to heart the inherent dangers of the small church. And so I’ve titled this post, “Six Things I Hate about You.”...

Some of you may be new listeners wondering why the name “ Greatheart’s Table. ” Our namesake is Mr. Greatheart, a guide for pilgrims in part two of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress . He is Bunyan’s image of a pastor. Greatheart’s Table is thus to be a place for like-minded pastors to gather for conversation and encouragement. It’s best for this to have a real table and real pastors. But perhaps this vi...

I have had several conversations over the past couple of days regarding pastoral loneliness, the isolation of a pastor’s heart, and the matters that pastors find it hard to confess. Pastors are isolated, and are pressured to be perfect. We are to have no cracks, no weakness, no vulnerability, and we buy this narrative. But, of course, we can’t be perfect, and we need the gospel. Even though we may...

Greatheart’s Table has been in the world for a year now! You who’ve read the newsletter or listened to the podcast have been my companions as I’ve explored various ways of thinking about ministry and the church. I originally committed to doing this for only one year. And yet I feel the urge to continue for a little while longer. The time is right, I think, for what I like to think of as ‘organic’...